This article from last week suggests that the patent may not be that important. A team has recently discovered a second protein that can be used to power the crispr process, and they believe that more such proteins may exist [1].

...but patenting proteins still feels ridiculous. This is information that all of humanity has, basically, equal access to. Finding something in this pile "first" and planting a flag in the ground seems like a pretty terrible way to share knowledge. There is a somewhat forced analogy here between genetic exploration and global exploration in the colonial period, but I think most historians would agree that the "I got here first" model of "rights" ended up exacerbating existing gaps between haves and have-nots.

[1] http://www.wired.com/2015/09/war-genome-editing-just-got-lot...